April Social Media Digest. What is new?

Spring is moving closer to an end and we are looking forward to the summer holidays, but April was rich in the news. And we are back with our monthly SMM digest to present it.

Facebook allows scheduling for Stories and new Ad Discovery Options

Scheduling both Facebook and Instagram Stories is a long-awaited tool, especially for SM Managers. Business Suite allows composing and scheduling them to go live on both platforms. Third-party platforms used to offer this option, but the native tool is a perfect option to stay in touch with your audience.

Business Discovery Options suggest related Pages and content, once a user has taken some time to take check it. These topic-based recommendations enable followers to discover new relevant content.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-adds-scheduling-for-stories-new-ad-and-business-discovery-options/598508/

Facebook provides new photo Layouts

New composer tools provide new frames to add a fresh look to your posts. It gives you the freedom to experiment with your pictures till it becomes stale. So, enjoy it! For now, this new option is not available for everyone, but eventually, it will be rolled out for everybody.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-adds-new-photo-layouts-feature-to-put-a-different-spin-on-your-p/598024/

Facebook adds Zoom to Portal TV

Facebook’s Portal TV Device provides new opportunities for maintaining work-life balance, since it allows you to use the biggest screen in your house and keep up with your workflow at the same time. This feature also allows you to free your device and focus on relevant information.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-adds-support-for-zoom-video-calls-to-portal-tv-enabling-you-to-co/598014/

Twitter simplifies its Ad Suite

Twitter is striving to provide clarity for its Ad Suite to help companies build a successful promotional strategy. The platform recategorized the whole Ad Suite and limited its advertising categories to a number of 5.

The new categories are:

-Promoted Ads tool allows you to use different pictures and videos in many ways to create a successful marketing funnel.

-Follower Ads will give you a chance to get your targeted audience and new followers involved, raise your brand awareness etc.

-Twitter Amplify. This tool allows you to align your promotion with the most relevant videos.

-Twitter Takeover offers premium placements.

-Twitter Live broadcasts the exclusive moments so that your followers could join it.

-The platform hasn’t launched any brand new tools, but the simplification makes sense, since it gives an opportunity to make the most of the existing ones.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-re-brands-its-ad-options-to-simplify-its-promotional-offerings/598008/

LinkedIn adds Other Job Title Options

The Platform makes changes in how the users can fill in the gaps in their career and the way freelance positions are listed. This option allows stay-at-home parents to showcase their parenting experience rather than hide it. “Stay-at-home mom,” “Stay-at-home dad” and “Stay-at-home parent” are the new job titles, provided by LinkedIn.

Stating “self-employed” in the employment type field allows the user not to mention a company’s name or employer.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-adds-stay-at-home-mom-and-other-job-title-options-to-help-addres/598333/

Instagram protects users from abusive Direct Messages

Instagram adds a new tool to filter message requests that contain potentially offensive words and stop people you’ve blocked once from contacting you again. Users will get an option to hide message requests and comments. Once you’ve activated the tool, the requests, recognized by the Platform as potentially offensive, will be stored in “Hidden requests” folder and stay there, until you chose to open it.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/instagrams-adding-new-tools-to-protect-users-from-abusive-dms-and-repeated/598826/

TikTok has rolled out a Wellness Hub

Staying healthy and fit is a lifelong trend. So the platform has rolled out a “Wellness Hub”, which is accessible through the application and provides useful tips on mental and physical health. It’s a new tool, that encourages positive thinking, creates a friendly atmosphere for users and provides professional recourses and further guidance. The new option will provide more ways to avoid unwanted contact.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-launches-new-wellness-hub-to-encourage-positive-behaviors-and-prov/598099/

TikTok adds a set of new visual effects

The new visual effects provide visual effects, that are synchronized with the tracks from the sound library. In other words, they animate any images, text etc to make your videos more engaging. A “Music Machine” tool, for instance, allows you to create music from various beats and sounds while recording a video. The key benefit of the new set of tools is to improve the content quality on TikTok.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-adds-new-music-triggered-visual-effects-tools/598006/

TikTok adds auto-captions

Last month TikTok launched a new feature. Now creators are allowed to turn on the auto-captions for the video clips. Once it is available, the users are able to read the text transcription, which is overlaid on the video. In other words, those captions create the subtitles, which allow views to choose between reading or listening to the video. Besides that, the creator is given a chance to view and edit the captions, while the video is played in a smaller window. Once captions are on, the text will be overlaid by default, but users can switch it off. This new tool opens a wide range of opportunities for presentations, boosting responsiveness and viewing time.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-adds-new-auto-captions-feature-to-improve-accessibility/597901/

Google launches video experiments

Google adds a new tool in Google Ads Dashboard globally. A new element will enable advertisers to test different approaches to marketing strategy. Those experiments are quite simple in use and allow advertisers to measure the results of the campaigns. The tools are also applicable to YouTube as they allow assessing the effectiveness of the videos on the platform. It tests various videos within the same audience, that is the way you can pick up the most resonating one. That is actually an effective tool for optimizing your ads budget.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/google-launches-video-ad-experiments-to-help-refine-marketing-approaches/597910/

Clubhouse launches direct payments

With this new monetization tool the users are given an option to choose their favorite hosts and transfer money to them. The application tests this option on a small group at the moment, but as soon as it gets positive feedback, this feature will be rolled out to everyone. Tapping a “Send money” button is enough for transferring payments. Thus the platform is trying to keep abreast of its competitor and keep the key hosts active.

More Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/clubhouse-adds-creator-payments-as-it-seeks-to-keep-popular-hosts-aligned-t/597841/

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